The upcoming launch of Solana (SOL) futures on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME), a US derivatives change, indicators that the primary US SOL exchange-traded fund (ETF) listings are coming quickly, Chris Chung, founding father of Solana-based swap platform Titan, advised Cointelegraph.
On March 17, CME is preparing to launch SOL futures contracts. They will probably be among the many first regulated Solana futures to hit the US market after Coinbase’s launched in February.
The itemizing “paves the best way for the eventual approval of SOL ETFs,” Chung advised Cointelegraph.
Chung stated he expects the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to approve asset managers VanEck and Canary Capital’s proposed spot Solana ETFs as quickly as May.
The existence of regulated Solana futures “indicators to regulators that Solana is maturing as an asset, making it simpler for them to greenlight extra monetary merchandise of comparable threat and sort,” Chung stated.
Futures contracts are standardized agreements to purchase or promote an underlying asset at a future date. They play a vital supporting position for spot cryptocurrency ETFs as a result of regulated futures markets present a steady benchmark for measuring a digital asset’s efficiency.
CME already lists futures contracts for Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH). US regulators accepted ETFs for each of these cryptocurrencies final 12 months.
CME already lists crypto futures, together with Bitcoin contracts. Source: CME
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Beyond memecoins
Additionally, Solana futures and ETFs will assist increase Solana’s development story past memecoins, which have been central to the blockchain community’s success in 2024, Chung stated.
These merchandise “will carry extra critical, sticky capital and pave the best way for the event of different real-world use instances, equivalent to funds and remittances,” in keeping with Chung.
Those use instances are “[f]ar extra boring than memecoins, maybe, however a dependable supply of long-term income that may buoy Solana’s value within the subsequent bear market.”
Memecoin buying and selling, largely tied to the favored Pump.enjoyable platform, includes roughly 80% of the Solana blockchain community’s revenues, in keeping with asset supervisor VanEck.
However, exercise on the Solana community declined in February after a sequence of memecoin-related scandals soured sentiment amongst retail merchants.
Solana vs. Ethereum value chart. Source: TradingView
Rivaling Ethereum
Still, cryptocurrency trading volumes on Solana proceed to rival these of the whole Ethereum ecosystem, together with its layer-2 scaling chains, VanEck stated on March 6.
Chung stated he expects Solana ETFs to take off amongst retail buyers, partly due to the challenges going through rival sensible contract platform Ethereum.
Solana’s native SOL token has carried out about twice in addition to Ether since early 2024, in keeping with TradingView.
Ethereum’s spot value has struggled since March 2024, when the community’s Dencun improve minimize transaction charges by roughly 95%.
“With the extraordinarily weak value motion we’re seeing in ETH, Solana is now the one choice for retail buyers desirous to get publicity to crypto past Bitcoin, however not keen to go full degen,” Chung stated.
Bloomberg Intelligence has set the chances of the SEC approving spot Solana and Litecoin ETFs at 70%.
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